from THE HOPE AND ANCHORby Julia Kitecopyright 2014-15

In Southall she springs open her ironing
board, then turns on Radio 1. The former is self-explanatory for a married
mother of two, but she hasn’t a clue why she almost reflexively puts on the
radio every time, and why it’s always that damn station. She doesn’t even like
what it plays. Her husband knows this. “You’re looking fantastic for 18, Andy
Jean,” he jokes whenever he hears pop hum from the hi-fi, and she always laughs
even though he’s not that funny and she’s not particularly fond of thinking
back to her life in the years when she was the target audience. For Andrea
Archer, the girl called Andy, age 18 wasn’t about festivals and the charts or
what you imagine will be playing in the background when you finally snog
whoever it is you’ve had your eye on for ages. And how disappointed you’ll
feel, the first of many disappointments, when it’s all a bit rubbish and your
lips are sore and he’s rubbing an obvious erection where you would rather he
didn’t. For Andy Archer, because she was still Archer then, age 18 was about
being a dozen storeys up in Freston Road, with a view of the motorway and the
screech of the Tube, over on that edge of Notting Hill that nobody would ever
put in a film starring Her with the Huge Mouth and Him with the Posh Cunt
Hairdo, the kind of people who live in some London that only exists for the
likes of them, but which the whole damn world now thinks is par for the course
for her postcode. When she was 18, Andy Archer thought the entire world was
obsessed with reminding her what she couldn’t have. All those things she could
never have even though they were so close that she could have hit them with one
strategically-aimed rock thrown from her perch in Crossway House. And hitting
them would have felt good.

It was her flat, hers alone – she
didn’t own it, of course, but it had her name on the tenancy. She’d gone
homeless. Couldn’t stay. That’s the explanation she gave most people, and given
the choice Andy would have stopped right there, but it was never enough, you
had to sing for your supper and when a flat in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is what’s being served in
the canteen tonight then you better be belting out one epic opera of your
sorrows. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It was written all over
the street signs. Royal my fat fucking arse, Andy Archer spat to
herself, and as there’s no real place for spit to go if not out, she usually
ended up swallowing her contempt for the borough, the city, the world, and
everybody in it. Her mother was exempt from the shit-list by virtue of having
left the borough, the city, the world, and everybody in it. The Royal Marsden
Hospital, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, that’s where she’d
died, tidily disintegrating, dropping all dignity, in the fucking Royal Marsden.

My mum’s just died, Andy had told the housing support
officer, one bureaucrat of many who blurred together in her memory to form a single suit. I’ve been settee-surfing with anybody who will still put up with me
because my mum’s just died, and my dad can’t stand the sight of me because I
look just like her when she was young and happy and well, and my little sister
has fits and my little brother is only seven and I can’t fucking deal with a
kid right now and on top of that, I’m fucking pregnant. I can’t be a mum when I
really fucking
need my own right now and I can’t have her. And I can’t go back to that house.
That house was for a happy family and they’re gone and they’re not coming back
and if I have to go through that door I’ll panic and then I’ll do something
stupid and get rid of my baby but I don’t want to get rid of my baby, I just
want to give birth somewhere that doesn’t have death clawing at me from every
wall.

She got the flat. She got rid of the baby. Not
intentionally. Miscarriage happens more often than people expect on the first
go round. The stress hadn’t tilted the odds in its favour, either. And Andrea
called it It because that’s what It was. Not a little boy or a little girl. An
event. A mark on a calendar. A party missed. An end, and the means to it. She
lost the baby but kept the flat. Nobody, not even the most faceless social services administrator, could kick out a girl in that state, a girl who’d lost
her past and her future so close together. Girl they called her, but 18 was a
woman, and from just across the motorway the BBC satellites beamed in news from
places where at that age she would have already popped out a half dozen kids
and buried half of them if she herself had been lucky enough to survive. In her
new home, Andy made the world very, very small. This is Planet Andrea. Not on
any map. She herself sometimes forgot that just around the corner there was a
Tube station called Latimer Road. Not a station that showed up too often in
travel guides or in Time Out. People
from countries she couldn’t pronounce would alight at Westbourne Park for the
carnival, at Ladbroke Grove for the market; years later, when there was no Andy
Archer anymore, just Andrea Ormiston, and when It was replaced by a Little Him
and a Little Her, and when all the time in the world once spent weeping at bare
walls and watching the trains trundle on westward was now not nearly enough
time to do the washing and hoovering and ironing in Southall, then there would
be a new station near the old home, a Wood Lane, with a posh new shopping
centre where the cheapest items in some shops cost more than a month of the
rent in Crossway House.

Around the time Andy moved in to the high-rise, Angela
quit riding the Tube. With her father being a driver she never had to pay fare
a day in her life, but she walked no matter the weather. Andy always grilled
Angela, pestered her to quit wasting time, and her sister just shrugged.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Angela would shrug,
lighting one of her sister’s cigarettes because who worries about cancer when
your mum, who never smoked a day in her life, only went and dropped dead of it
anyway? “I just feel like going walking. Things make more sense when they're right in front of your face. It’s just what I feel.”

“Well, what you feel is fucking wrong,” Andy would reply,
momentarily satisfied living in her flat, her planet, her fortress, and its
world of absolutes. And she’d light a cigarette, too, and the sisters would lie
down on the floor and look for patterns in the pebbly Aertex ceiling the way they
used to look at summer clouds.

Those nights after the TV broke, Andy would sit in the
window with a microwaved Tesco Value lasagne in its black plastic tray,
watching the headlights and taillights winding their way along the twist of the
Westway. At this part of the motorway and at this time of night, untrained eyes
couldn’t know for sure who was coming or going. Now and then she brought a man
back to Crossway House – I’ve got my own
flat in North Ken sounded so nice in theory – but they rarely got a second
night to enjoy the view. Some people smoke after sex; Andy Archer panicked. She
wanted them out. Do the deed and then you’re done, goodbye, good luck, don’t
call me. Life was too fragile to give little scraps of it to everybody she
barely knew and still expect enough of it left for herself. Get out, she always thought. You and your entitlement, you and how you
roll out of my bed and walk to my toilet like you suddenly deserve part of my
existence, like you’ve done me some kind of favour, you need to leave. She
never said it, she just stared at the ribbons of cars as the sky grew lighter
and the traffic heavier and her heartbeat quicker. I can’t take these people who think they’re meant for some bigger
purpose, Andrea thought. This
high-rise is the closest anybody should ever get to having their head in the
clouds and the sooner we all realise that, the fucking better.

That’s what she had loved about Stuart when she met him.
There were thousands like him coming down from their Dundees and Sunderlands and
Swindons and Northamptons, armed with no particularly remarkable talents other
than holding an unrelenting belief that the rules that apply today will still
apply tomorrow, and should they follow those rules, their existences will be
suitably comfortable. Men not groomed to be world-changers, men who believe
that good enough is a triumph and not a slippery slope. They had met in the pub
beside Ravenscourt Park on Bonfire Night. She’d had her bag nicked and she was
fairly pissed and she told the few mates that she still had to go on without
her because she liked the look of him and the sound of him with the Scottish
voice that wasn’t Glaswegian, what is it anyway, what’s Dundee like, I’ve never
been, why’d you come here, fer crissakes why did you come down here? Oh. You
have a job. Tell me about your job. And he’d told her about the job, junior
management; and he’d told her about the Sunday football side he’d put together
with some other lads he’d known at some ex-polytechnic now-university who had
all come down to London; and had she seen that film that everyone else had
seen, because he’d seen it twice; and he’d steadied her when she got up too
quickly and too drunkenly and his mates in their button-front shirts were
cheering and clapping GO ON MY SON! as they left but he told them to shut it
and when she woke up in his bed the next morning, he was still asleep on the
floor and her tights were in the same place she’d left them the previous night:
on her legs, elastic goring her belly. And she had thought, fuck me, I am going to
fall in love with this man even though there is not one thing about him
that is any different from millions of others. Because I have already made it
this far.

One morning in June she woke up, padded out of bed
quietly so as not to wake him, wrenched open that twelfth-story window the few inches it would comply, and one
by one she flicked the dregs of leftover prescriptions onto the road below:
Seroxat, Prozac, Citalopram. They married at the Chelsea Register Office. A
year after that, the baby boy, and then a few years off before the baby girl.
Jack and Cassie. Not Jaiden and Chantelle, not Jordan and Chelsie – and how the
fuck could Katie Pickering from
school name her baby girl Chelsie
when the correct spelling is right there on every street sign in the borough
where you both grew up? – but Jack and Cassie. Solid names for stable lives.
Catherine plus Sandra, his mum plus her mum, that makes Cassandra, that makes
Cassie. She was particularly proud of that one, of herself. Go up to Scotland
every summer to see Nan. Go over to Shepherd’s Bush to see the Archers not too
often. Have them over instead, to their home, the one they’d made together.
Both the man and the boy quickly becoming fond of Queens Park Rangers, with the
girl in her blue-and-white scarf whenever she watched the matches on TV with
Daddy. No Disney princesses for her. Strictly Daddy’s little attacking
midfielder. He’d stopped swearing for the kids, she’d stopped swearing and smoking
and taking the odd E and getting trolleyed and belligerent at the weekends, and
then together they’d found their little Metroland home.

They’d rented in Ealing for a while, convenient enough
for Stuart’s commute into the City on the Tube. By the time he no longer felt
so enamoured with London as to demand a directional post code – West Eleven,
West Five, he’d once cared about these things – the housing bubble had burst
and UB1 was looking like a good investment. They had investments now, Andy and
Stuart. Decent ones. Lovely little house party once most of the boxes were
unpacked. Angela had stopped by, tipsy. Her face had gone a bit pink and
splotchy, the way it tended to look whenever she was either drinking or about
to have a fit, which she had done and which she did, and it was Stuart who
caught her on her way down, whoopsadaisy, easy now, nobody panic, it’s alright,
could you get her a blanket, Andy? And when her teenage sister came back to the
land of the living within a couple minutes and promptly puked White Russians
and a bit of kebab onto the deep-pile carpet of their new lounge, Andy watched
her husband laugh it off. Jesus Christ, she thought. I never realised I
deserved any of this joy. I never knew any of it could be mine.

Andrea Ormiston, because that’s who she is now, unplugs
her iron but she lets the radio play. This is Radio 1, the DJ announces from
somewhere inside his own world, closer to Crossway House than she would ever
be, ever again. 97 to 99 FM, BBC Radio 1.

“Mum. Mummy!”

Andrea Ormiston folded socks and
placed them into four stacks arranged by the size their owners’ feet. “What is
it, Cassie?”

“Can we have 3rd and Bird now?”

“No, Cassie, you already saw 3rd and Bird today.”

“But I want more.”

“There isn’t any more. Rastamouse should be on now, how about
that? Let’s see what Rastamouse and Scratchy and Zoomer are doing. You can sit
here and fold with me, yeah?” She knew the names of the whole litter of
reggae-singing rodents on children’s television now. It’s not what she envisioned
for herself at age thirty, but there are worse fates than knowing the entire
stop-motion republic of Mouseland is governed by a President Wensley Dale.

“I don’t like them. They talk
funny.”

“Cassie. They talk differently. It’s because they are from
Jamaica and you’re from London.” She decided to save the discussion of how
there could be overlap between the two for later. Cassie had plenty of time to
learn the intricacies of immigration, dialects, multiculturalism, cultural
diffusion, whateveryawannacallit. And growing up here, she would. But right
now, so long as she didn’t point at the women in sarees in Southall Broadway,
that was good enough.

“What’s Jamaker?”

“Ja-MAY-ca. It is a country. Like
England is a country, you live in England. Jamaica is on an island far, far
away. You would have to get on an aeroplane and spend all day flying to get
there. It’s hot and sunny all the time, like summer here. It’s like that always
Really pretty. And people there speak English, but they sound like Rastamouse
instead of like you and me.”

“That’s funny.”

“No, it’s different.”

The little girl didn’t reply. She
sat transfixed at the puppets on the television, the gaggle of anthropomorphic
mice teaching patois to a load of white kids across Britain on a Sunday
afternoon. Christ, Andy thought, what’s with the bling on that big one? Diamond
ear studs? A dollar sign on a chain? He’s a mouse, fer crissakes. A blinged-out
puppet mouse. I’m all for creativity and reflecting real life today, but the
last thing I need is for a little toy rodent to make my kids feel like they’ll
only be good enough to make music or fight crime or whatever the hell they’re
doing if they’ve got gold chains around their necks.

“Cassie, fingers do not go in
mouths.” Bad habit. Needed to be kicked sooner, not later. One tiny, sticky
hand flew down to the carpet and wiped, dutifully. Andrea picked through the
basket of clean socks to find the twin for the one from Stuart’s football kit.
Osterley Rovers, Saturday League. Sponsored by the local ratbag pub, the
Railways Hotel. A solid centre-back, stocky and fearless if not a bit short for
the position. We’ve got to sign Jack up
for a club, Stuart was always reminding her. He’s got too much energy. He’s got to let it out somewhere bigger than
the garden, and learn how to get along with others. It’ll do him good.
Andrea had no objections to the idea, but she also had no time to figure out
the logistics. And there was nothing wrong with the garden, with its pear tree
and the space for a few chairs and a barbecue during the summer. Calm down,
Stuart, she was always begging him. We’re fine here. There’s time for
everything. We’re doing fine. Aren’t we doing fine?

The telephone rang just as Andrea
was finishing rolling the green-and-white cotton of Osterley Rovers into a
fresh ball.

“Hello?”

“Andy?”

Her heart sank. “Hi Dad.”

“Andy, how are you, love?”

“Alright. Watching TV with Cassie.
What’s up?” If you ask for money I’m
hanging up and you know I’ll do it because I did it last time you called and
that was only a fortnight ago. Even your memory’s not that bad.

“Has Angela been in touch?”

“No. Not in yonks. Is everything
alright?”

“Yesterday I had some girl saying
she’s her flatmate ring me up and say she’s not answering her phone.”

“Wait, wait, steady on, Dad. Who’s
ringing who?”

“A girl. A Neely Sharpe. She says
she lives with Angela and she hasn’t seen her in a few days.” A girl living with Angela? Next you’re going
to tell me you’ve been going to the meetings again, and you’ll actually expect
me to believe you. I’m thirty now, Dad. I’m not going to be a soft touch for
you anymore.

“Well, I haven’t heard from her.
Have you tried giving her a bell?” You’re
right down the fucking
street from her, Dad. I’m in Southall. I’ve got two kids and a husband to take
care of every day. I haven’t got time to play Find the Bloody Obvious with you.

“Of course I have. Her
answerphone is all full up. Tried yesterday afternoon, at night, this morning.
No luck.”

Andrea swapped the phone to her other shoulder and
watched Cassie ponder the buttons on the remote control. “Dad, her phone must
have broken. Sure she’s not at work? Maybe she can’t have her phone when she’s
working. Cassie! Leave it.”

“Eh, think this girl would know if Angela was working?”

“Christ! I dunno, Dad. Who is this girl, anyway? Give me
her number. I’ll sort it out.”

“I haven’t got her number. She rang me on the land line.”
Oh, well, isn’t that just fine and
fucking dandy. So I suppose it’s my problem now.

“Well, let her ring back. What’s her name again?”

“Neely Sharpe. Sharpe with an E.”

Andrea furrowed her brow. NEE LEE SHERP, she scribbled
onto the back of the Radio Times with
Jack’s blue crayon. Underlined it twice. Drew a little box around it. Drew a
little moustache onto Russell Brand’s picture there, too. And a pair of
thick-rimmed specs. And horns.

“I don’t know anybody called that. I’m sure it’s nothing, Dad.
I’d come by but Stuart’s got the car and he’s gone to the football with Jack.”

“Still following QPR?”

“Yeah, Jack ought to have Childline on speed-dial. Rough
life.”

“Ring them and tell them to pop round after the match. I
haven’t seen little Jack in ages.”

“Can’t, Dad. Sorry. Jack’s got a pal’s birthday party
right afterward. They’ve got to come right back.” Andrea had learned to feel
comfortable lying to her father before she was even a parent herself. Her
husband and her kids were her family.
She would choose when and where they saw her father. Her choice. All hers.
Andrea thought of Jack and Cassie running around the back garden, around
Southall Park, along the little green off Longridge Lane. How kids could shriek
and smile at the same time. She was making them who they were, her cheery
little mischief-makers, her pair of do-overs. Everybody she says this to has
slid away, and so she has never said it to her husband, but she knows it’s
true: The miscarriage was the best thing that ever happened to me. How could I
have brought a child into all that misery I held back then? It matters. Kids
notice everything. Babies, even. They can’t talk, but they know full well when
people are in agony inside. Jack and Cassie were born into happiness, born into
peace. And look at them now. Straight out of Mothercare adverts. Like hell am I doing anything to wreck that.

“Ah, well, another time then, love.”

“Yeah.” Andrea watched Cassie, now engrossed in the
narrative of Rastamouse and the Easy Crew making a bad thing good. The little
girl lay on her belly on the carpeting, chin in her hands, lazily kicking her
striped-tights-clad legs. The feet were getting filthy. Her mother made a
mental note to buy a new pair next time she passed by Primark. Cassie went
through a pair every few weeks, but so long as her mummy didn’t say anything,
she had no idea that they weren’t the exact same ones she was putting on again
and again. She knew Mummy washed them and they came out perfect because Mummy
had that superpower. Mummy could do anything. Her mummy was better than your
mummy. Fact. End of.

A long pause. “Dad? You there?”

“Yeah, Andy.”

“Everything else alright?”

“Oh yeah. Great.”

Poor Dad. He tried so hard and achieved so little. But it
wasn’t her fault, so she couldn’t make herself feel guilty. Not her problem and
she wasn’t going to let him turn it into her problem. “Alright, Dad. I’d better
go. Let me know if that girl calls back.”

“If Angela gets in touch – ”

“Yeah, I’ll let you know. Don’t worry. She’s fine.”

“Alright, Andy.”

“Bye, Dad.”

“Goodbye, Andrea.”

Press the button, end the call. She was always the eldest
child, with an eldest child’s responsibility. For a moment she watched Cassie,
watched a little girl entirely absorbed in her own world. Did that mouse in the trackie just say “my bred’ren”? Fuckinell.
Angela would have loved this as a kid. She sounded so daft trying to speak like
the black kids.

“Caz?”

The girl flipped over and grinned. “Yes, Mummy?”

“Do you want to help me with these socks?”

Cassie scooted over on her hands and knees like an
excitable puppy, one that hadn’t yet coordinated all its limbs. Andy portioned
out the child-sized socks. “Match each sock to its twin. And then fold them so
they stay together, like this.” She demonstrated for her daughter who grinned
and nodded and promptly created sloppy duplicates of Andrea’s efforts. “Good
girl. Perfect. I’m just going to make a phone call, yeah? I’ll be right back.”

Andy retreated to her bedroom and shut the door. “Call
Angela,” she directed the mobile phone, and it dutifully displayed her sister’s
name and number on the touch-screen. Brilliant, this technology. You tell it
what to do and it does it. Simple as. A ringing. Five more. Then the terse
recording: “Hi, this is Angela, leave a message and your number and I’ll get
back to you when I can.” We’re sorry, but
this subscriber’s mailbox is full. And then nothing. No explanations. Fine,
then. What time had kickoff been at QPR? Would Stuart be driving now or still
in the stands? Didn’t matter. If he didn’t answer, she would text. He was good
with that kind of thing, Stuart was. Always replied. Never kept her waiting too
long. Her mates were always moaning about their men, how they didn’t
communicate, how this one’s husband or this one’s boyfriend was doing this
one’s head in. Andrea didn’t have to worry about any of that. You’re so bloody
lucky, they told her. You lucky cow. You and your man and your kids. Lucky,
lucky cow. Stuart wasn’t the fittest, or the wealthiest, but my god, at least
he texted back.

“Hiya,” she greeted her husband, hearing the chants of a
crowd at the other end of the line. “Listen, Stuart, sorry. It’s my dad. He’s
going on about how he can’t reach Angela, and she’s not picking up – nah,
Angela, my sister. He says he can’t reach her on the phone. I can’t, either.
Could you pop over to her flat after the match? Just knock on the door. Yeah.
Right up the Harrow Road. Number four-ninety. It would be a massive help. Just
to shut him up. Thanks. I love you. Thanks. Yeah, I’m sure it’s nothing. No
worries. It’s fine.”

She hung up. Brilliant Stuart. Now that was a man. He doesn’t cast a shadow of a shadow of a
complaint about how he has to chase after your fucking family. Never
has done, never will. He married you, but got them anyway. And he never, ever
complains. Quality, that. God grant me a fraction of the serenity. Andrea breathed deep. Stared
at her phone. Laid it onto the dressing table next to the bottle of perfume
he’d bought for her birthday, the one she really wanted, the Dolce and Gabbana.
It smelled like holidays she will never take. Back to Cassie, to Rastamouse and
the Easy Crew, to the basic obligations she fulfils so well. “Done, Mummy,” the
little girl grinned, pairs of socks fanned out in front of her, happy to have
helped.

Andy moved into the kitchen as her daughter stayed glued
to the television. The tasks of motherhood suited her: a conveyor belt of
simple chores to be done well enough, at regular intervals. Floors were swept
and mopped with total understanding that they would get dirty again, flirt with
a certain threshold of filth but never quite get there because Andy would come
bearing mop and bucket once more. She cleaned dishes with the express intention
that they get covered in muck sooner rather than later. An hour passed before
she heard the key in the door, the rush of Jack’s little boots and Cassie
running to meet her big brother. Once Stuart hung up two coats and passed into
her peripheral vision, Andrea abruptly killed the tap and quit scrubbing the
dishes. “No sign of her?”

“Nah. Just that flatmate. Said she hadn’t seen her at
all.”

“I’m going to kill Angela. Making Dad worry. And you know
what he’s like – if he worries, he makes sure I worry just as much. Did you get
this girl’s number, then? I’ve never heard of her.” She peeled off her
washing-up gloves and sank into her chair at the kitchen table. Mummy’s chair:
the one with its back to the open space of the kitchen, so that she could
always get up and fetch what needed to be fetched. Do mummy things.

She searched her memory for anything
remarkable from before her father’s phone call. “Stuart. Jack ate all the
leftover jalfrezi. Sometime last night he must have gotten into the fridge when
I wasn’t looking and he ate all the leftover jalfrezi.”

“S’alright. We’ll order out more.”

“No. He’s only six! You’re not
supposed to eat that kind of fire when you’re that little.”

“Was he OK?”

“Of course he was. He wouldn’t have
kept eating until it was all gone.”

“Alright, Andy. I don’t see what the
problem is.”

“There’s no problem. I just
thought...well, it’s something, it ain’t right, innit.”

“Aye, did he spend all night on the
toilet, cursing the day he was born, vowing to never touch a curry again?”

“Eh, no.”

“No harm done, then. Andy. Relax.”

Andrea sighed. “I can’t. Kids.
There’s so many ways to mess them up, and all you need is to mess up once.”

Her husband laughed. Walked up
behind her chair. Squeezed her shoulders, kneaded his fingers into the tense
muscles in between them. “Eh, well, there are kids in this country who don’t
have any leftover curry. Wee man is lucky to have parents with such good taste.
His pals probably have to make do with rat kebabs. We’re spoiling him.”

“Oh Christ. Now I have to worry
about ruining Jack by giving him too many nice things! Better take back the
Christmas pressies.” She was only half-joking.

“Andy! You turned out alright.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“You questioning my judgement?” He
leaned forward and aimed a kiss at her forehead, but only reached her hairline.

“Oooh, fuck off,” she murmured. Andrea’s
swearing only came around out of tenderness nowadays, and never in front of the
children. Like the half-hearted swat she gave Stuart’s face as he wrapped his
arms around her and aimed his lips at the widow’s peak growing in mousy brown
below the last auburn dye, Andrea’s harshest words were reserved for the people
she wanted closest to her. These tiny aggressions reminded the ones she loved
that she valued them enough to want them to know where her buttons were and
exactly how to push them. “No, really. You grew up on what, deep-fried Mars
bars?”

“Those and…fermented haggis and a pint of
Irn-Bru with breakfast. Daily ration of superlager starting on the twelfth
birthday. Andy, I grew up on exactly what you grew up on. The kids
will be fine.”

Andrea shook her head. “God, don’t go by my childhood to
predict that. I once put Coca-Cola in with the milk in Angela’s bottle when she
was tiny. Stupid. I guess I thought it would taste like a melted ice cream. She drank the whole thing and it
gave her horrible trapped wind and she was up all night screaming. The wind and
the caffeine. Thought my mum and dad would murder me.”

“Jesus. How old were you?”

“Six or seven. Seven.”

“Why were you feeding a baby when you were seven?”

“Why weren’t you?”

“Cos I’m an only child? You know that.”

“Oh. Right. Well, Angela didn’t have her first fit until
I was a teenager, but I swear, for ages I worried that giving her Coke and
Tango and Tizer and all that when she was little, like really little, had
somehow fried her brain with all those chemicals and I was to blame.” Stuart
laughed. “Shut it! It was terrifying. I honestly thought it was my fault. I
never told my parents. I was really that scared.”

“How is Angela, anyway?”

“Fine, I suppose. Haven’t heard from her in a while.
Probably just in one of her moods. She gets this way. Goes all quiet for ages
and then suddenly she’s back to being Miss Sociable.”

“Well, invite her over. We’ll have her over, make a nice
dinner. Or take her out for a curry.”

“With the kids?”

“Cassie really should try her first chicken tikka masala
before she turns four.”

“True. Don’t want to have a little underachiever. All the
posh parents wean their kids on sushi. Christ, I bet their kids are making sushi when they’re her age. Going
on holiday to Japan and that.”

“Andy, you’re making me hungry.”

“Have a Pot Noodle.”

“I freeze my bollocks off at Loftus
Road for two hours and my missus is too cruel to boil the kettle.”

“Make me one while you’re at it,”
she added. They have history, Stuart and Andrea and Pot Noodles. She had a
cupboard full of them in Crossway House. All the different colours of pot
stacked up in tidy columns. She hadn’t cared that they cost so much more than
the Tesco Value noodles. They just tasted better. They comforted her. They were
healthier, too, if you read the small print. Less sugar and salt. Those things
were important. We don’t do Sunday roast
in my family, we do eat what you like cos it’s Sunday and nobody’s going to
tell us what to do with a weekend. And if they try, my little sister will boot
them, with a sweet little smile.

All colours, all lined up. She and Stuart
had sat in the Crossway House window facing the Westway, curled up to fit, knees
interlocked. She had decided to let him in and not kick him out. Her pot was
green, his was black – the Bombay Bad Boy, an excellent choice. A little bit
adventurous, sufficiently fun, but not a twat about it. You could tell a lot
about a man from his number-one Pot Noodle preference. Men who picked the red
Southern Fried Chicken pot above all others tended to be dull bastards, too
dull to actually go down the road and buy real fried chicken from one of the
millions of takeaways specialising in it and open late. Original Curry types,
yellow, were reliable. Chicken and Mushroom eaters, like herself, knew a good
thing when they saw it wrapped up in green plastic. Moreover, they appreciated
said good thing. And if he didn’t eat Pot Noodle at all then you could tell he
was a twat who thinks he’s too good for everybody. She had tried to pass her
bit of wisdom down to Angela, that you should decide for yourself what was a
necessity and what was a luxury and do what you had to do in order to make your
budget work. Had it gotten through to her little sister? Andrea wasn’t sure.
She hadn’t gone around her sister’s flat in yonks. And Angela, inexplicably,
preferred the Super Noodles that came in packets, the kind you had to actually
serve in a bowl. And she liked to eat them dry.

Today, Stuart prepared two green pots. Left her the
sachet of soy sauce to deal with herself. She liked that bit of autonomy. Andy
watched the steam from his pot rise up and thaw his face. I am so lucky, she
thought, not for the first time today. I got so fucking lucky. She found
herself absorbed in the act of stirring the noodles, the breaking apart of the
solid mass in the hot broth. She used to tease her sister, she remembered. Pot
Noodle Head, because she had the kinky blonde hair. If it had bothered Angela,
then she hadn’t shown it. It shouldn’t have bothered her. Pot Noodle was
brilliant. End of.

“Andy?”

She jerked up her head. Stuart had been talking. “What?
Sorry, was miles away.”

“About your sister,” he said. “This girl, this Neely. She
said that wherever Angela’s gone, she hasn’t taken some box of tablets. Thought
you should know.”

Andrea will remember this moment for the way her fork
froze in the pot. Froze in movement alone, because the food itself was still
piping hot, and that heat travelled up the metal cutlery and started to burn
her fingers but she didn’t let go, she didn’t take it out of the pot, she
didn’t do a thing. I finally grew up
properly then, she will acknowledge in retrospect. Because this was the day I realized that I never again wanted to eat
another Pot Noodle.